by Stan McNeal, Special for USA TODAY Sports

by Stan McNeal, Special for USA TODAY Sports

ST. LOUIS - It was the kind of victory the St. Louis Cardinals needed. They had hung on for a tight, emotional win at the division rival Pittsburgh Pirates that sent them home after a brutal stretch that put them on the road for 26 of their first 38 games. Happy flight, indeed.

"Hopefully, we can use that as a springboard," said manager Mike Matheny, knowing how much his team needed a jolt to push it past its disappointing start.

Then the Cardinals went out the next night and were embarrassed 17-5 by the last-place Chicago Cubs. Matheny was fed up with talking about momentum builders.

"I keep saying, 'This is the one.' I'm done with that nonsense," he said. "It's just a bunch of hot air, and if I were listening, I'd be tired of hearing it. I'm tired of saying it. We just have to do it. That's all there is to it."

It's been that kind of frustrating start for the 2013 National League pennant winners. Widely predicted to run away with the National League Central, the Cardinals have spent all but the first few days looking up in the standings at the Milwaukee Brewers.

Thanks to a lagging offense, St.Louis has been inconsistent. The Cardinals, 26-22 after a 5-3 loss Friday night to the Cincinnati Reds, are showing signs of consistency after a start that saw them win more than two games in a row just twice.

Now, they've won eight of 11, but still show maddening signs that sustained success may be elusive.

Sunday's 6-5 loss that ended a four-game winning streak was as excruciating as the blowout defeat against the Cubs. St. Louis held 3-1, 4-2 and 5-4 leads against the Atlanta Braves, but its pitching, a safety net all season, caved in, illustrating the Cardinals' low margin for error when they don't hit. Closer Trevor Rosenthal blew a 5-4 lead in the ninth by walking in the tying run. The Cardinals got a runner into scoring position with one out before losing.

"People have to be aware that this is not acceptable baseball," general manager John Mozeliak said this week. "This is a talented club and I still believe in it, but having a belief in something is far different than actually getting it done. It's still early where you can't hit the panic button, but you have to see the trend line changing."

The consternation about the Cardinals can be boiled down to one number: .235, the club's batting average with runners in scoring position entering Friday night.

That's way off last year's .330, which was by far the best mark in the majors since the RISP statistic has been tracked since 1974. As hitting coach John Mabry points out, that was akin to the entire team hitting like Stan Musial for an entire season. The Hall of Famer and Cardinals great finished his 22-year career with a .331 average. Of the majors' top 10 individual averages with RISP last year, five belonged to Cardinals.

Few expected the Cardinals to duplicate that success. Still, after signing a potent bat in shortstop Jhonny Peralta and upgrading their speed by trading for Peter Bourjos, the Cardinals thought their offense, which led the league in scoring last year, would remain as robust.

Instead, it's been more fizzle than sizzle. St. Louis entered Friday night ranked last in the National League in home runs, on pace to hit two fewer (85) than the '85 pennant-winning Cardinals.

But those Cardinals stole 314 bases; this team ranks next-to-last in the NL in steals, with 18.

With their RISP hitting coming back to reality and without much power or, until lately, speed on the bases, generating runs often has been difficult for the Cardinals despite the optimism from the recent surge.

Pitching a mainstay

Only Peralta, who leads the team in home runs, and All-Star catcher Yadier Molina have hit up to expectations.

Allen Craig, a .298 career hitter, needed a month to lift his average to .200 and is now batting .244. He was the majors' leading hitter with runners in scoring position for the past two years, but his RISP average this season was more than 200 points off last year's .454. Leadoff hitter Matt Carpenter has been up and down after a 2013 breakout, leading the team in runs but also in strikeouts with a batting average that's at .271.

Burly first baseman Matt Adams has had his average over .300 for most of the season but, despite hitting cleanup for much of the season, has driven in only 15 runs. The lineup's third hitter, Matt Holliday, is hitting .380 with runners in scoring position but has only two homers, none in May.

The Cardinals suffered a 10-game homerless stretch in April and began the week on an eight-game skid. While Matheny maintains he has no problem with the hitting approach of his players, St. Louis awaits an offensive outburst.

"We know that we can hit homers," Adams says. "We know that they're going to come. We're not worried about that."

Only their pitching has been relatively worry-free. Led by Cy Young Award candidate Adam Wainwright, the Cardinals boast the National League's second-best rotation ERA. The addition of Pat Neshek has strengthened a bullpen that features a trio of second-year power arms in Rosenthal, Carlos Martinez and Kevin Siegrist, though Rosenthal's ERA sits at 4.56.

"We've been fortunate because we've had some very good pitching to keep us in games, but we haven't been able to sustain leads," Mozeliak says. "We haven't been able to add to leads. We haven't been able to put teams away. When you do that, you play .500 baseball or sub-.500 baseball."

But key might be the schedule. In the first leg of a 19-of-22-game stretch at Busch Stadium, where crowds have exceeded 40,000 every game this year, St. Louis went 7-2 before departing for the holiday weekend series at Cincinnati; it won't return to the road until an intra-state matchup June 4 at Kansas City.

"You'd like for every season to be rosy and win 110 games, but that's just not the way it goes," Wainwright says. "Sometimes you go through stretches that are very tough. We're lucky enough to go through a very rough stretch.

"There's a lot of teams that wish they were .500 after such hard times. We know we're well over (being a .500 team)."

Their offense might have found a substitute for last year's timely hitting, too, in their newfound speed. With rookie second baseman Kolten Wong back from the minors and Bourjos again in the lineup after a rough start landed him on the bench, the Cardinals have been putting their wheels to work. Bourjos and Wong spurred victories last week with their speed, and, for the moment, things felt better.

"What matters to us is the consistency of good," Matheny says. "We keep saying we expect it to happen because of what guys have been able to do in their careers. We've seen offense at times, we've seen defense at times, but it's seldom that we've seen the whole package for an extended period of time."